Apartment block has two separate fire safety systems. What is fair when deciding who pays for replacing one of them?

L

L_earner

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Two thirds of our apartment block was built twenty years ago, and has an integrated fire safety alert system that is due to be upgraded this year. The plan would normally be that the management company would pay for this from the sinking fund. However the remaining one-third of apartments each has their own fire safety system, that the owners are expected to pay for maintaining themselves, even though their system connects to the existing one for fire alerts. In effect, this means that the owners of the newer apartments would be paying twice, as they contribute equally to the sinking fund. One solution proposed is that the owners of the original two thirds of apartments pay for this year's upgrade, but how can that be managed? It will get messy when these owners claim (quite rightly) that they have paid into the sinking fund all along, and should not have to dig into their pockets again. Another concern is that if the owners of the newer apartments are left to pay for their own upgrades some years from now, it might not happen in all cases, putting everyone at risk.
Would it be fair to use the sinking fund now to pay for upgrading the two-thirds of older apartments, and commit to pay for the upgrades of the newer apartments when the time comes?
 
Use the sinking fund to cover two-thirds of the expense and the owners affected to cover the balance?
 
Leases are silent on the matter, beyond a general statement that all owners must pay towards the annual management fee and sinking fund, from which day to day running costs and non-annual costs are to be paid respectively.
 
L_earner said:
Leases are silent on the matter, beyond a general statement that all owners must pay towards the annual management fee and sinking fund, from which day to day running costs and non-annual costs are to be paid respectively.
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I wouldn't read that as silent. To me that implies the sinking fund should be used to pay for this.
 
When you say the new owners have to maintain their own systems, what does that actually mean? Subscriptions, hardware repairs, regular inspections? Has this been the case since the new apartments were built/bought?

The fact that the older apartments have an integrated system would be a significant factor in favour of using the sinking fund. Perhaps the management fees do/should reflect the different maintenance costs but it would be heading down the road of 'its takes longer to clean these hallways because they are wider, so they should pay more'. Clearly everyone benefits from an modern and integrated fire system.
 
Itchy said:
When you say the new owners have to maintain their own systems, what does that actually mean? Subscriptions, hardware repairs, regular inspections? Has this been the case since the new apartments were built/bought?

The fact that the older apartments have an integrated system would be a significant factor in favour of using the sinking fund. Perhaps the management fees do/should reflect the different maintenance costs but it would be heading down the road of 'its takes longer to clean these hallways because they are wider, so they should pay more'. Clearly everyone benefits from an modern and integrated fire system.
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In the end we decided to cover both upgrades using the sinking fund. Everyone is happy.
 
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